Chapter Ten #3
“Excuse me.” I wrench myself from Roze’s grip and stumble from my seat, even though I know I shouldn’t, even though it breaks every rule about dining with the Queen.
I can’t sit in that room for another moment.
I hear Roze stand behind me and hurriedly say something to excuse our absence as he follows me from the room.
Once we’re in the hall, I heave into an empty urn situated on a pedestal and pray it’s not very old or expensive.
“Sinclair?”
I pull back, and he stops at the sight of my face. I keep seeing all these things—visions, omens, hauntings, whatever they are. I can’t trust my own eyes, my own mind. And the sight of my own dead eyes staring back at me … It seemed like more than just a ghostly trick. It seemed real.
“Tell me something true,” I say, desperate to ground myself.
His face slackens, a whisper of understanding passing over it. He takes a step forward.
“You are at dinner with my family. I’m courting you so that my mother won’t kill you. You’re going to help me find out what killed my father so we can get rid of the thorn tattoo and neither of us has to die.”
That lines up, but it’s a small relief.
I heave again, vomiting into the urn. Roze comes up behind me, pulling my hair gently away from my face.
“You killed a man with your toes last night, but now you can’t tolerate dinner with my family?”
I wipe my mouth with my wrist. “There were beetles in my soup. Big, ugly black ones. You didn’t see them?”
“No,” he says.
“And the butlers. Did they … have faces?”
“Of course they did.”
I shake my head. “I think I’m losing my mind.” I don’t know what to think. I only know what I saw.
He sighs deeply. “You’re not losing your mind.”
He rubs my back as he holds my hair, the movement so kind and so foreign that it makes me lightheaded again.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter.
Slowly, I right myself. I feel wobbly on my feet, and the world is tilting strangely.
“I’ll tell you the truth if you promise not to hit me again,” he says.
I snort crudely. “Fat chance.” I stumble a little, and Roze tightens his grip on me.
“Easy,” he says. “Is this what you’re like drunk? Saints, I’d love to see that.”
“I can hold my liquor,” I say defensively, though I’ve only had alcohol twice in my life—once when Cerise stole a bottle of port from the school cellars for my birthday, and then during the All Hallows Eve masquerade.
“I’ll tell you the truth, but you’re not going to understand at first. So I’m requiring you to hold your questions until I’m done explaining. Understood?”
I make an ambiguous grumble, and he seems to take it as permission to continue.
“There is a reason my mother is so hell-bent on finding all meigas and destroying them. It’s not because she considers you all traitors. My mother is a meiga.”
I look up at him. “What?”
He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I told you to not ask questions—”
“Your mother is a meiga?” I’m nearly screeching, and he shushes me. In a whisper I demand, “When exactly were you planning on telling me this?”
“Soon enough,” he bites back.
“You didn’t think it was pertinent information? We have six days, Roze.”
“I know,” he growls. Suddenly he grabs his left wrist, rips open his sleeve buttons, and shoves his sleeve up to the elbow. “It’s my life on the line as well, remember?”
He brandishes the tattoo in my face, and it’s shocking to see not only the sinister tattoo, but to see his skin when he keeps himself constantly mummified beneath layers of clothing. I fall silent.
He lowers his arm and meets my eyes with a glare.
“Just let me explain, will you?” He pulls his sleeve back down.
“My family has many secrets, and that is one of our most precious. Do you have any idea what the nobles would do if they found out what my mother is? There’d be an insurrection, Sinclair.
She already has those snakes constantly trying to wheedle their way to the Crown.
Did you know she’s had five marriage proposals since my father’s death?
Five. And half the nobility want to assassinate my entire family and take the throne for themselves.
You think conditions are poor for your precious commoners in the caverns now?
You have no idea how bad it would get if the monarchy fell. ”
Despite the weakness of my body, my mind is buzzing. If the nobles are as two-faced as Roze says, perhaps one of them had motive for killing the King.
“That still doesn’t explain why she hates meigas,” I say.
“I’m getting to it. Patience, Sinclair.” He sighs.
“My mother believes that magic belongs only in the hands of royalty. She considers all magic outside of royal veins a heresy, and blaming meigas for some of the Kingdom’s ailments helps her save face before the Court.
It distracts them from worse problems—food shortages, disease, that sort of thing. ”
A wave of pure rage washes over me. “Unbelievable. So she’s hunting me down because she thinks that executing me will make her popular with the nobles?”
“It’s not just that she thinks it will. It has.”
“What does that mean?”
He cringes and glances at my face. “I’m afraid you’re going to like this part even less. You remember how there were meigas who sided with Aragoa during the war?”
My mind flies back to Sir Patrick’s lecture from this morning. “Yes.”
“When the Mists came, the meigas on our side put the wards in place on the castle walls to protect us. Most believe that Mother had them all killed because they betrayed the Crown, that they were plotting with Castelle to overthrow the King, but … that was less than true.”
I narrow my eyes. “Less than true?”
He nods. “Another of our family secrets. She didn’t trust that many meigas in an enclosed space together. She thought it would be too easy for them to turn against the Crown, so she executed them.”
I gape at him. I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.
I knew the Queen was a tyrant … I knew she wanted me dead, even.
But I still didn’t truly believe that she was evil.
Some part of me actually believed what I’d been taught my entire life—that magic was corrupt, immoral, wrong.
I’ve believed for so long that I was wrong, that on some level I deserved their hatred.
But if what Roze is telling me is true …
There were good meigas. And the Queen killed them because she wanted to be the only one with power.
“One of the meigas escaped,” he continues. “And cursed her so that she cannot personally harm another meiga again.”
“That’s why she sends you,” I realize. “It’s not just because she’d rather not do the dirty work herself.”
Roze nods, his gaze distant. “It’s why she wouldn’t merely reach across the table and choke the life out of you herself tonight.”
“I knew public opinion wouldn’t really be enough to hold her off.”
“I’d hoped it would help,” he says with a shrug, “as I hoped convincing her we were in love would help.”
I click my tongue. “I can’t imagine her caring about such a silly thing.”
He lifts his eyes, meeting mine. “Silly? That’s what you think of love, Sinclair?” After a beat, he looks away. “Even my mother can be a romantic, you know. You’d be surprised.”
I am surprised. The cold, cruel woman in that dining room doesn’t seem like the sort to be swayed by love.
Another thought occurs to me. “Are … are you a meiga, Roze?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
My heart falls, and I’m more disappointed than I should be, the hope that maybe I’d finally found someone who could understand evaporating.
He continues, “So, my mother is a meiga. That’s why you saw what you saw tonight. I don’t understand much about how her magic works, but I know that she has the ability to create. Because of the curse, she can’t harm you. She’s trying to scare you instead by creating illusions.”
“Illusions.” It wasn’t real. None of it. “So she made me see those things to …”
“Embarrass you. Terrify you. Make you come unhinged. She’s used to getting what she wants. I don’t doubt she’s furious that I’m trying to defy her orders.”
That doesn’t explain the ghost boy. He scared me out of that kiss with Roze, but the Queen was the one who demanded that we kiss.
I look up at his face, but he’s looking pointedly away from me. “Have you ever done this before? Defied her orders?” I ask.
He pauses, flicking his tongue against his lower lip, and my gaze is stuck to it for longer than is advisable. “I tried to … when I was younger. I don’t attempt it anymore,” he says. “It doesn’t go well for those who do.”
I blink and look away. “Do you think it’s possible that the Queen killed your father?”
“I was with the Queen when the King passed.”
“Oh.” I want to say that she still could’ve done it, that it could’ve happened at another moment, especially with power like hers, but I know I shouldn’t. Not now.
He shifts on his feet, then takes a step toward me. “Listen, I know this will be difficult, but we have to go back inside. We must convince my family that this engagement is real.”
“You seemed bereft at the idea of kissing me. I think you should take your own advice.”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “Trust me, Sinclair, you don’t want that.”
I cross my arms over my chest. He has such a problem with kissing me but won’t say the real reason—that he thinks himself above me. Well, I’m going to make him admit it. “And why wouldn’t I?”
The corner of his lip curls. “Because a kiss from me would be devastating. It would ruin you.”
Arrogant bastard.
Before I can argue, he leans close, tilting his head and lowering his voice to speak in my ear even though the hall is empty. “After dinner, the family always does drinks and games in the parlor. There, I can talk to my mother. Perhaps we can make a bargain with her.”
“You’re certainly one for bargains, aren’t you?”